Year A, Second Sunday After the Epiphany, Psalm 40:1-12; Isaiah 49:1-7; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42

As I was reading and reflecting on the passage in Johnâ€™s gospel set for today, I began to notice how central the theme of the giving of names and titles is. It is John the Baptist who offers the first new title. He calls Jesus â€œThe Lamb of God.â€ He clearly identifies Jesus by this name twice in succession. Between these two acknowledgments, The Baptist says something very curious, something that may account in part for why this section of the gospel is so rich in names and titles. Itâ€™s to help us get to know Jesus better.

For while The Baptist acknowledges that he has been preparing the way for the one God would send, the one who would baptize with Holy Spirit, he admits that when Jesus came to be baptized, â€œI myself did not know him.â€

This is the kind of remark that can easily slip right past us, but it is actually rather startling if you know your Bible, because in Lukeâ€™s gospel, John the Baptist is said to be the cousin of Jesus. In Luke, when Mary is about three months pregnant she goes and visits her kinswoman Elizabeth, Johnâ€™s mother, who is about six months pregnant with John. Elizabeth tells Mary that the child growing within her had leaped for joy at the mere presence of the child Mary is carrying. As a result, there are many classical paintings and scultures of the two children playing together, John always dressed in skins–even as a child of two.

But in the other gospels there is no hint that Jesus and John have met before. In ancient times people did not always write the stories of the childhood of the great the way we do. They wrote what seemed to them would have been most fitting to have taken place. So it is possible that St. Luke thought it would be most fitting to have John the Baptist, who was, after all, the Forerunner of Jesus, acknowledge him even in the womb. Perhaps what St. Johnâ€™s gospel seems to suggest here is true. John the Baptist knew he was waiting for someone, but he did not know who. He had no name in mind: he trusted that God would reveal the one John was waiting for by his role in Godâ€™s plan.

So when John the Baptist names Jesus he calls him, not â€œCousin Jesusâ€ but â€œthe Lamb of God.â€

â€œLamb of Godâ€ has two different connotations in this context. One is of sacrifice, like the Passover lambs that were offered to God in the Temple as a reminder of Godâ€™s power to rescue and deliver from slavery. In the story of the Exodus from Egypt, the blood of the slain lambs was put on the doorways of the people, so that God passed over the homes of the Israelites and saved them from a night of death and destruction. Jesus is to be this for the human race–the lamb by whose shed blood Godâ€™s redemption is made possible.

The Passover lamb is supposed to be watched for three days, to make sure it is pure and without blemish. In St. Johnâ€™s gospel it becomes clear that The Baptist has been watching Jesus for three days. John sees the purity of Jesus. It is of an order so extraordinary that it can only be divine. He is fit to be the redeemer. So John also bestows on Jesus another name or title: the Son of God. This name, then, is linked to the title of Lamb of God, and the role of the Passover lamb.

But the Lamb of God has another meaning. In the Middle East, shepherds often use young rams the way other nations use sheepdogs–they are actually trained to lead the flock, and the flock follows where they go. John the Baptist also sees in Jesus this extraordinary power to draw others.

And two of his followers immediately prove John right–Jesus has only to walk by and they fare drawn after himÂ as if they were already members of his flock and he were the young ram trained to lead them. But note John has encouraged them in this. He has named Jesus in their hearing â€œThe Lamb of God.â€ He must know that he will lose them. But the Baptist also knows that he is the forerunner, and that, however painful, this giving over has always been his destiny.

More names for Jesus follow. â€œDiscipleâ€ means something like student, or learner, or follower. These two disciples of John make clear that they have left John in the next title they bestow on Jesus. The two disciples callÂ him â€œRabbiâ€, which means something likeÂ teacher or leader or even “master”. Â To become a disciple is not like signing up for a college course in Hebrew Scriptures. It is more like taking an oath of allegiance to your professor on those scriptures.Â So the two are making it clear that they have transferred their loyalty from John to Jesus, and that from now on, they will follow him. It is a huge commitment, but Jesus seems unsurprised. They ask him where he is staying and he does not reply directly. Instead, he offers an invitation: â€œCome and see.â€ He doesnâ€™t explain with words, or give directions, or create any kind of verbal barrier. He just says, â€œSee for yourself.â€ And by the end of the afternoon Andrew rushes off to invite his brother, Simon, also to â€œcome and seeâ€.

In telling Simon about this wonderfulÂ new rabbi, Andrew gives Jesus another new name–â€œMessiahâ€, which means â€œAnointed One.â€ The act of anointing marks one as set apart for a special purpose. Kings in Israel were anointed, and the people of Israel, groaning under the Roman yoke of oppression, had long looked for a deliverer set apart by God for this purpose. An Anointed One. A King. A Messiah.Â So here is yet another name or title for Jesus, and we use it to this day, for Christ means â€œAnointed One.â€

The last name bestowed in the portion of the gospel chosen for today is not a name given to Jesus, but by Jesus. He gives Simon a new name, one that eclipsed his former name in memory for all time. We all know who Peter is–Peter the impetuous, the foolish, the stalwart, the denier, the powerful, the passionate, the all-too-human, most vivid of all Jesusâ€™ followers. But Peter is a nickname–itâ€™s a Greek version of the Aramaic nickname Jesus would have actually used. Petra is Greek for rock–think of petrified–and in Aramaic, the word for rock is Kefa. And here and there in Paul’s letters later in the New Testament we see references to an important manÂ he callsÂ Cephas–who is almost certainly our “Peter.”

Why is there such a cascade of names and titles here in St. Johnâ€™s gospel?

I think in part it is because St. John is trying to show us Jesus from as many vantage points as possible. He will show us what each of the names really means in the context of Jesusâ€™ whole ministry as it unfolds in the succeeding chapters.

And why the new name for Peter? I donâ€™t think Jesus ever thought Peter would be a â€œrockâ€ in the steady, stable way we might think of when we say a person is a rock. Heaven knows that Peter is anything BUT the Rock of Gibraltar type. He is impulsive and hot headed. And when the chips were really down he even denies he ever even knew Jesus!

But he is a rock in the way even you or I can be.

Peter is foolish, flawed, fallible–just like us. He knows he is weak and willful–like the rest of the human race. But Peter has seen the Lamb of God both as the young ram that leads the flock, and as the Passover lamb that is slain for the sake of the people. Peter has lived side-by-side with one so pure that the divine light cannot be hidden within him. He knows this is the Son of God. Rabbi Jesus has taught Peter, by words and deeds, things he had never even begun to imagine when he was a simple fisherman. I doubt he ever fully got over the shame of denying his Lord. But Peter knows that, as vacillating as he has been, he wants to give his whole heart and soul to Jesus. The love is there, despite all the ways Peter messes the love up.

And that yearning love is enough: it is THAT rock on which Jesus–teacher, Messiah, Lamb of God, Son of God–can build his church. And we who call on him by his many names need seek only to know him, to know him ever more fully, more surely, in all the times and seasons of our lives, and we will discover that a love yearning for its beloved has found a place deep within our own hearts.

In this Second Sunday of Christmas we are reminded of the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem. The story of the one little baby, out of so many innocents, who managed to escape death only to be become a refugee in exile in a strange land, is one that resonates all too deeply with our present age.

It does not fit well with the cheerful spirit of the Christmas season if by that we mean eating cookies and drinking hot punch and singing, â€œGod rest ye merry, Gentleman, let nothing ye dismay.â€ Mostly we like to turn our backs on the darkness of the world at this season of light and joy.Â But darkness is very much a part of the story of this child born in Bethlehem. Despite all its real beauty and goodness, there is never a moment in this world in which there is not, somewhere, pain and suffering and injustice. There is never a moment in which innocents are not being slaughtered at the command of the callous, the cruel, the indifferent. Indeed, if it had been otherwise, if our world were not a place streaked through with heartrending sorrow and undeserved suffering, there would have been no need for the Incarnation.

Christ entered this world to experience everything we humans experience. He is truly our brother, and we are truly his sisters and brothers, because he shared every aspect of human life with us, in all its joys and terrors. And because he shared our flesh and blood existence, we share in his divine existence.

So wherever in the world we hear of the slaughter of innocents, wherever there are refuges flooding over borders in terror of persecution, this story of the slaughter of the innocents of Bethlehem and the flight of the Holy Family serves to remind us that Christ has been there too. The evil that pursued him and sought his life as an infant is the same evil that still cuts young lives short, that still treats human beings with hardhearted indifference.

Every year, we mark the coming of Christmas with lights, in part from joy at the coming of the Light of the World. But this is also the darkest time of the year, and we also light our lights in defiance.Â We know, even as we seek for a few days to try to forget, that the lights of Christmas shine in the still-real darkness of the world. Evil–terrible, crushing evil, evil in human hearts, evil in circumstances and situations,Â evil in human systems and governance–is still all around us.

But we Christians hang up our lights and sing our songs of hope and joy because we are utterly certain that evil will never have the last word. That Godâ€™s promises will be kept.

Even the dreadful story of the flight of the Holy Family from slaughter and persecution, is filled with reminders of Godâ€™s promises to humankind. The angel who appeared to Joseph gives him counsel of hope and salvation. When Joseph heeds the angel, and flies with the infant and its mother to safety, he takes same the long road into exile and uncertainty in the Land of Egypt that another Israelite named Joseph had taken many, many long years before. In that Egypt the descendents of Joseph and his brothers had lived for centuries, first as welcomed guests, and then later as slaves under a Pharaoh who, just like Herod, had ordered their children slain. But the child Moses had escaped the slaughter, in his basket of pitch and reeds, and had been rescued and protected by the daughter of the Pharaoh. Moses had grown up to lead his people out of exile and slavery in Egypt and back to freedom and safety in their own long-promised land.

So in the flight into Egypt and his return, the child Jesus and his parents retrace the whole story of the Israelite people. The invincible power of the saving hand of God that had lain on the Israelite people in their going into exile and their return is thus also made a part of Jesusâ€™ story from the very beginning.

Jesus was relentlessly pursued by evil all his life. He knew danger and sorrow and want and terror from his earliest days, but he never let his deep awareness of the evil of the world corrupt his spirit.

Even in the Garden of Gethsemane, when they came for him in darkness, Jesus submitted only to Godâ€™s power and to Godâ€™s goodness: â€œFather, not my will, but your will!â€

There is a beautiful carol which illuminates perfectly the strange place in which we find ourselves when we contemplate the Â story of the Slaughter of the Innocents in the context of Christmas.Â It begins at the stable, and ends at the cross, and it goes like this, in part:

A stable lamp is lighted
Whose glow shall wake the sky;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry…

This Child though Davidâ€™s city
Shall ride in triumph by;
The palm shall strew its branches,
And every stone shall cry…

Yet he shall be forsaken
And lifted up to die;
The sky shall groan and darken,
And every stone shall cry…

But now as at the ending,
The low is lifted high;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry
In praises of the Child
By whose descent among us
The worlds are reconcilled.

This is the meaning of Christmas: that aÂ light shines in darkness and will not be overcome.

The light of the Christ child burst upon our dark world, andÂ despite everythingâ€”despite corruption, callousness, cruelty, misery, heartbreak, injustice–we ourselves are called to resist the darkness, and to be beacons of light to those who have been tortured and brutalized by those who have fallen into the embrace of darkness.

Christ took on human flesh that he might be like us in every respect, and as we eat his flesh and drink his blood in the Eucharist, we are once again offered the opportunity to be refashioned in his image, and to show forth the light of Christ that has been kindled in our hearts ever since that first stable light was lighted, 2000 years ago and more.

Due to weather and the Eagles game our Epiphany Dinner and Auction has been postponed until January 3oth, immediately following the Annual Meeting. Though it will be held at lunchtime, it will still be the same delicious dinner fare.

The Epiphany Dinner benefits our Youth but is for everyone in the Christ Church community, of all ages. And you are welcome to bring family, friends and neighbors as well.

For the Auction we need donations of new or â€œgood as newâ€ items, hand-made items, antiques and collectibles, including sports memorabilia, and gift certificates from businesses. We also auction off services. If you offer a service this is great way to introduce yourself to people in the parish. And if you patronize a business very frequently, please ask if they would be willing to donate a gift certificate.

We are always in need of items for younger children to bid on. That game or book or doll or stuffed animal or other gift or toy that did not appeal to your youngster and which has been languishing in its packaging may be just perfect Â for another child.

All proceeds benefit the Youth Pilgrimage Fund. This fund enables us to keep the cost of the Pilgrimage as low as possible for families of the youth. Thank you all for your support over the years.

If you have goods or a service you can donate, please contact Judy Buck-Glenn at 610-521-1626 X 24 to make arrangements, or leave your donation, clearly marked â€œEpiphany Dinnerâ€, with the office, or bring to church.

Everything we know about the birth of Jesus comes to us from either the Gospel of Matthew or the Gospel of Luke. Lukeâ€™s gospel, with its concern for the poor and marginalized, tells of the angels who appeared to poor shepherds to announce the birth of the Saviour in an animal feed stall. Matthew, with his focus on the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, tells of the astrologers from the East who see in the conjunction of the heavens that the long-awaited Messiah of Israel has been born.

But Mark and John have no such stories. Markâ€™s Gospel begins with Jesus, already a man grown, coming to John the Baptist to be immersed in the Jordan. Jesusâ€™ origins are of little interest in Markâ€™s telling. We hear nothing of who he is or where he came from beyond the mere fact that he was from Nazareth in Galilee. Even the story of his birth in Bethlehem, so important to both Matthew and Luke, is of no interest to Mark. Mark simply announces in the first sentence that Jesus Christ is the Son of Godâ€”and then Jesus simply arrives on the scene and sets rapidly to work. Markâ€™s intention is to lead us to conclude for ourselves, little by little, by his recounting of the events of Jesusâ€™s life, that he is, indeed, The Son of God. But just what this means is a mystery. A mystery, by the way, that the disciples are not clever enough to grasp. But Mark makes it very clear, by this bold declaration in the very beginning, that he has higher hopes for his readers, and that they, at least, are capable of Â grasping just what it means to proclaim that Jesus is the Son of God.

The Gospel of John also does not contain a birth narrative and it also makes no reference to Bethlehem. But rather than one rather short, bald declaration, as in Marksâ€™ opening sentence, John begins with 18 gorgeous verses that are profoundly rich and deep both as poetry and as theology.

Â John wants us to realize that he has no birth narrative because he is telling a story even more incredible that the one Luke or Matthew tell. Johnâ€™s narrative is not about a particular baby who was born at a particular time and place, and the events that surrounded his birth, and what people made of them. The story John wants to tell is not at all about the birth of a holy man, and not even about the birth of the son of god in the way Johnâ€™s world understood such an idea. After all, Augustus Caesar, the emperor when Jesus was born was also called â€œthe son of god.â€ In fact, the Roman coin that was given Jesus when he asked to see whose image was on it in his famous â€œRender unto Caesarâ€¦â€ teaching was probably a coin with the face of Augustus on one side andÂ â€œdivi filiusâ€â€”â€œSon of Godâ€â€”on the other.

John wants to launch a far higher claim than this. He sets out a direct challenge to the power and prestige of the most powerful people in the world, the emperors of Rome. He claims this Jesus is not a mere Son of God as declared by the Roman Senate, as Caesar is, but the active principle that brought the universe and all that is in it into being. This is the story of the coming down into the world of Godâ€™s word, Godâ€™s wisdom, Godâ€™s agentâ€”uncreated, coeternal, an endless participant in the divine life itself. And John is seeking words of enough beauty and power and majesty to convey that astonishing fact. Â

So he starts his Gospel with the opening words of Genesis: â€œIn the beginningâ€¦â€

Creation began with a Word: â€œLet there be light.â€Â John wants us to understand that there was never a time when Christ did not exist. Just as a word spoken cannot separated from its speaker, in the same way Christ is inseparable from God. John does not even claim that Christ came into being before the foundation of the world. John is claiming that his gospel is the story of how God, the God who brought everything that exists into being with a Word, came to enter our world as one of us. John is claiming that in this man Jesus, God became flesh. Baby flesh. Boy flesh. Man flesh.

And as flesh, subject to all the perils and humiliations of every other human beingâ€”but filled with the divine light, so that the deepest, darkest, most impenetrable places of the world were shot through and through with light by his very entrance among us.

John wants us to understand that in this arrival among us is contained the answer to all the mysteries of existence: Â the meaning of the universe, the purpose of human history, the God-ordained solution for the puzzle of evil. In this majestic prologue to his gospel, John is showing us the path in the wilderness, the light in the darkness, the love that seeks out each and every one of us, a love that brought us into being, nurtures us, and will not willingly ever let us go.Â

And John is also trying to stir us into full wakefulness. Â He wants us to understand what it means to say that God entered the world and dwelt among us as one of us. For by so doing, every aspect of human life was taken into the life of God, and made holy and sanctified. Nothing human is left outside, so that in him and through him, heaven and earth are completely reconciled. As the Eastern Orthodox like to say, â€œGod became human so that we might become divine.â€

Â That is why right here, in this beautiful prologue of Johnâ€™s, an astonishing promise is made: in and through the coming of the son of God, we are all given the capacity to become sons and daughters of God. Since the beginning of creation, through the whole story of the people of Israel, God has been working to save and bless the human race. And now comes this most decisive event: the Incarnation. God made flesh.

And this is not something that took place back then, in the distant past. John wants us to see that it goes on. God was with us 2000 years ago, and God was with us 1500 years ago, and God was with us 1000 years ago and God was with us 500 years ago, and God is with us today. Todayâ€”just as God was thenâ€”God is with us. And todayâ€”just as God did thenâ€”God dwells among us, and todayâ€”just as we did thenâ€”the human race Â receives the gift of the embodied light, the light that casts out all darkness, and grants to us Â the grace and truth, that, in the beginning, and from the beginning God intended for us, as Godâ€™s beloved daughters and sons.

Some years ago, when I was working at a different church, I had a commute that took about 45 minutes each way.

At first, I listened to National Public Radio as I drove back and forth. I like music, but when I am driving by myself, I prefer something that engages my mind more than music does. I used to listen to a couple of Philly talk stations, but over the years talk radio has become so contentious that I could not enjoy it. I found Howard Stern utterly repellant, and sports radio talk wearisome. So I usually listened to National Public Radio, because I enjoyed listening to interviews with musicians or authors or people in the news, and to conversations that are always far more civilized chat than the raucous pot-stirring that is most talk radio.

But over time, that palled as well. It was too random–I might or might not be interested in a given person or topic. And, of course, the down side to be too terribly interested is that I had to shut the radio off when I got where I was going, which could be frustrating. I needed something that I could control.

Which how I arrived at books on tape.

At first I got a lot of Teaching Company courses. It was a wonderful way to learn more about Western philosophy, or St. Augustine, or medieval history or theology. But after awhile, I began running out of courses. And I had to admit that as steady diet it was sometimes a little dry. So I bought some novel tapes–all of Jane Austen, lots of P.G. Wodehouse, all of Tolkien, among others. But that was getting a bit pricey. And I enjoy listening to favourite books over again, but not over and over and OVER again.

That was when I discovered Recorded Books. For a monthly fee that was comparable to the price of buying one tape, I could rent four at a time, and send them back as I was done–postage is free–so that I had a constant supply of new tapes coming. Since I began doing this I have â€œreadâ€ well over 100 books, with great enjoyment.

It is astounding to me how many people look with disdain on the reading of books on tape–like it is some kind of intellectual cheat. But who reads to impress other people, or even to impress oneself? I read for pleasure, and it doesnâ€™t matter in the least to me how I get that pleasure–eyes or ears, it is all one to me. Or it was.

But now, gradually, I have come to realize what an unrepeatable joy it is to listen to a superb reader bring a book to life. I am in the 8th or 9th book of Patrick O’Brianâ€™s marvelous Aubrey-Maturin novels, and the reader, Patrick Tull, has me so immersed in the world of the Napoleonic era, and life in the Royal Navy of the early 19th century that it is sometimes hard to turn off my car. The books are wonderfully written–I would have loved them as novels if I had happened to have encountered them that way, but I have never read any of them, as I could not possibly do justice to them in my own mind compared to what Patrick Tull can do.

Tull, who was born in 1941, died some four or five years ago–fortunately after finishing the reading of all 21 of the books in the series, as O’Brian died in 2003. Tull was a rather round man, not ugly, but not very handsome, and his acting career was fairly limited in its successes–steady work, but small parts and character roles mostly. I am sure most people have never heard of him. But he can inhabit any character like a chameleon, and had a marvelous ear for any British dialect–I gave my mother a tape of him reading How Green Was My Valley, and she thought he had to have been Welsh–“He sounds just like my grandfather!â€

In the Aubrey-Maturin books Tull has a much more challenging task than simply maintain one accent, as he had to switch back and forth from a British accent to an Irish one just to do a conversation between Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend Stephen Maturin, the shipâ€™s surgeon. Add a character with a West Country accent, an American, and a Frenchman, and someone from Belfast, and hear his quick transitions from one accent to the next, with never a foot put wrong–it is remarkable. And rivetting.

As I say, you may not have heard of him, but in the audio world he is regarded as one of the Voices of the Century. (If you have access to a computer, go to the Wikipedia article about him and click the You Tube link in the footnotes to get a taste of how he does it inÂ a public reading of a small segment of one of the Aubrey-Maturin novels, The Reverse of the Medal.)

Unknown to most of the world–and yet a truly great genius. You could think it was a sad thing, but it really is not. Tull lived with evident gusto, won acclaim in his own little corner of the world,Â did not have to endure the burden of celebrity, and his work lives on the 104 books he recorded. As long as people are reading Patrick Oâ€™Brian–and I think that will be always–Patrick Tullâ€™s marvelous interpretation will also be heard. Great fame may have escaped him, but nothing of importance did: he used his gifts and talents to the fullest of his abilities. And I think that is what God hopes for each of us. What more can you ask?

Once every three years, this particular Sunday–Advent Four in Year A–rolls around and because Year A draws on Matthewâ€™s gospel, we finally get to hear a little about one of the most enigmatic figures in the New Testament, Joseph, the husband of Mary.

We never hear him speak–even in Matthewâ€™s gospel, which focuses on him, things are said to Joseph, but he never replies. In Lukeâ€™s gospel, with all its attention on women–on Mary and Elizabeth–Joseph is even more shadowy. And then the story jumps straight Â from the infancy of Jesus to the life and mission of Jesus–and Joseph is gone. He is presumably dead, though we are never told that. He simply vanishes into a silence as complete as the one in which he begins.

And yet, imagine how difficult things were for poor Joseph! He is engaged to be married to his young bride and suddenly he learns that she is pregnant–and he knows the child cannot possibly be his. How painful! How heartbreaking! How betrayed he must have felt by this discovery! Surely he would have had much to sayâ€”and yet not a syllable was recorded. We get only the most indirect glimpse of his feelings.

Of course, people have certainly thought about Joseph, and the situation in which he found himself, over the years. There is, for instance, a very famous Christmas carol called the Cherry Tree Carol which includes a direct look at Joseph and gives him a voice and lets him speak, at least for a moment, from his anger and hurt:

Joseph was an old man, and an old man was he,
when he wedded Mary in the land of Galilee……Joseph and Mary walkâ€™d through an orchard green,
where was berries and cherries as thick as might be seen.O then bespoke Mary, so meek and so mild, â€˜
Pluck me one cherry, Joseph, for I am with child.â€™O then bespoke Joseph with words so unkind,
â€˜Let him pluck thee a cherry that brought thee with child.â€™

But that is just where Joseph has taken hold of the wrong end of the stick, of course, and the song sets him straight in no uncertain terms:

O then bespoke the babe within his motherâ€™s womb,
â€˜Bow down then thetallest tree for my mother to have some.â€™Then bowâ€™d down the highest tree unto his motherâ€™s hand:when she cried, â€˜See, Joseph, I have cherries at command!â€™O then bespake Josephâ€” â€˜I have done Mary wrong;
but cheer up, my dearest, and be not cast down.’……Then Mary pluckâ€™d a cherry as red as the blood;
then Mary went home with her heavy load.

But even in this carol, which begins with Joseph, notice how, by the end, the focus is off Joseph and onto Mary. Joseph, despite his apology, just doesnâ€™t quite measure up.

And yet, what was asked of Joseph was no less great than what was asked of Mary, and if he seemed to waver, remember that he did not have the same choice Mary did. Mary was asked if she would be willing to endure disgrace and humiliation for the sake of the child that was to be born, and Mary said yes. Joseph was presented with the fait accompli of her pregnancy.

And we are not told how he learned of her pregnancy–the indirect wording of â€œShe was found to be with childâ€ suggests he did not hear it from her, but from others, so that Mary either did not or was unable to explain. So it is almost certain that the news came to him with shame and stigma already attached, and that other people were well aware that the boy was not the son of Joseph. This would be very difficult for a â€œrighteousâ€ man–to marry a girl with such a deep public stain on her reputation. And, in fact,Â what Joseph has to learn is indeed about righteousness: about the difference between self-righteousness Â and true righteousness.

Self righteousness is easily shocked and scandalized, and is characterized by a sort of judging disapproval.

As I was preparing this sermon, I looked at a number of paintings of The Holy Family, and most show Joseph as an old manâ€”-sometimes a terribly old man, old enough to be Maryâ€™s great grandfather. And the Cherry Tree Carol I quoted from also calls him an â€œold manâ€. But there is absolutely nothing in the gospel to suggest this. After all, Mary was very young, perhaps 12 or 14, and the normal assumption would be that her chosen husband would also be young, perhaps 18 or 20 at most. The legend that Joseph was old is based on several factors. Most importantly, it is the basis for the argument for the perpetual virginity of Mary. This is also not in the Bible, but has been an important claim forÂ many through the centuries. If Joseph was very old, the argument runs, he was not able to consummate the marriage. Also, it tidies up a loose end–if Joseph is old, it explains his disappearance from the story. He was simply so old that he died before the boy grew to manhood.

But there is no evidence in scripture that Joseph was old, and it seems far more likely that he was a young man. And I think it makes the story richer to think of him this way: Joseph is a normal, ardent young man looking forward very much to having his bride for himself and a life together with her and their children. And now the rug has been pulled out from under him. No one would have blamed him if he had publicly repudiated Mary. A terribly self-righteous man would have felt it incumbent upon himself to do so.

But, as Matthew makes clear, Joseph was not that self-righteous. He considered Maryâ€™s dignity and the shame that would follow her if she were publicly disgraced. He was ready simply quietly to dissolve the engagement with no recriminations.

And that was indeed the act of a man with a loving heart. So generous an act that it is clear that Joseph thought that quiet resignation and withdrawal were the utmost that anyone could possibly expect of him.

But God was pushing for more. God was pushing Joseph to claim true righteousnessâ€”to ask himself â€œWhat does Love demand of me?â€ And what Love demanded was that Joseph would embrace Mary and the baby, and care for them, andÂ bear the same pain and shame that Mary had already accepted as the cost of obedience.

God was calling Joseph to surrender the last vestiges of the appearance of righteousness in the eyes of the world, calling him to be fearless and faithful for the sake of love and true righteousness, regardless of what the world thought of him.

Because just this kind of true righteousnessâ€”of love, faithfulness and fearlessnessâ€”would be required of all who would ever love this child.

And so does it still. And, indeed, in all that we do, God calls all of us to faithfulness and to the courage to love in the midst of imperfect relationships and in a world that may at times look so imperfect that it seems unredeemable.

But just as God promised to be with Joseph if he would embrace Maryâ€™s pregnancy and the child that was to come, God promises to be with us even if all the world is against us.

And promises too that this will be, not just enough, but absolutely all that is required.

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD…

…(W)ith righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth… (Isaiah 11:1-2, 4a, 5-6)

…Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
The wolf shall lie down with the lamb
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.

The beautiful words of Isaiah are haunting and mysterious and thrilling. They are the words of one who looks toward a consummation which has yet to be accomplished, but which is most certainly to come.

When Isaiah says â€œA shoot shall come out of the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots,â€ he is pointing back at the line of the ancient kings of Israel, and to a very troubling truth. For Jesse was the father of King David. And over and over, David was promised by the prophet Nathan that if he and his sons were faithful to God, and were righteous and true in all their dealings, the line of David would never end–that there would always be a descendant of David on the throne of Israel.Â

And yet, even by the time Isaiah wrote–perhaps three hundred years after King David–the royal line that descended from Jesseâ€™s son David had ended. No descendent of David ever again ruled as King in Israel. The dynasty had ended–cut down like a great oak.

Last spring, a family on my block began to do a massive extension of their row house. When they are done, the house will be more than twice as large as it was. But since this is on a city block, and all they had to work with to make the addition was a car port and a little apron of land, they had to use every square inch of the sidewalks so the workers would have room to move in. So they had to cut down the locust tree that had stood on the sidewalk out front for almost 30 years. They cut it down to a stump about three feet high. We were all heartsick, because when you live in the city, you value every tree. Where once there had been a flourishing, beautiful tree, which had arched to touch the tree across the street from it, and help make of that block a lovely little arcade, there was simply a sad looking stump in the midst of a tangle of construction equipment.

Time went by. And then a very surprising thing happened. After all, that dead-looking stump still had its roots. And those roots lived, deep under the sidewalk, invisible to all who went by, still mourning the lost tree.

In fact, I had almost stopped thinking about the tree, since what with the fencing and scaffolding and the porta-potty and the piles of bricks and blocks you could hardly see anything on that corner anyway. And then one day I happened to look over and realized that those deep-running roots had drawn new life out of the earth and revived the stump. It was absolutely crowned with green shoots. Dozens of them. And that there was a great cloud of green leaves gracing the top of that poor desolate stub of a tree.

It was beautiful, and all summer, as the workmen worked, it hung on, a living fountain of green shoots and leaves.

It is an image such as this that inspired the prophet Isaiah–the miracle of a dead-seeming stump sending forth green shoots. In the time and place into which Jesus was born, Isaiah had been dead for almost 700 years, and one conqueror after another had taken and ruled the Holy Land–Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans. The ideal king prophesied by Isaiah was longed for, looked for–but had not yet come. And that is what â€œAdventâ€ means– â€œcoming.â€ Coming, expected, awaited–but not yet here. The stump looks dead–but the roots are alive, and the green shoots WILL come. That is the promise, and the expectation.

In the New Testament both Matthew and Luke offer a genealogy of Jesus. In Chapter 3 of his Gospel Luke describes the “generations of Christ”, beginning with Jesus and tracing backwards from his “earthly father” Joseph all the way to Adam. En route, two named ancestors are King David and Jesse. In chapter one, verse one, Matthew’s Gospel begins: “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Matthew makes it clear from the start: this Jesus is one of God’s chosen people, the Jews, by his descent from Abraham, and he is the “shoot of Jesse” by his descent from Jesse’s son David. This is also why the birth of Jesus takes place in Bethlehem, for Jesse, David father, was known as Jesse the Bethlehemite.

Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise God made to David.Â The line of earthly Davidic kings may have died out, but Jesus was never going to be that kind of king anyway. But he reigns in the kingdom of God. A descendant of the House of David sits on an eternal throne, never to be overthrown or deposed.

All over Europe, many medieval churches and cathedrals have paintings and stained glass windows of Jesse Trees. It was clearly of powerful importance to them.

The typical window shows Jesse, lying down or sleeping. From his belly there springs the trunk of a tree which ascends, branching to either side. On each branch are figures representing Christâ€™s ancestors with Christ at the top. The number of figuresÂ may vary. But Â if the Luke’s whole genealogyÂ is used, there will be 43 figures from Jesse to Jesus.

This prophecy of Isaiah was the only one in the Old Testament to be so universally illustrated. There are many reasons for this, but perhaps it is in part because in the Middle Ages the church was making great efforts to control the vicious and brutal warlords who served as kings and nobles, to make them something more than nominal Christians. This effort led to the institution of chivalry. And in this effort, which lasted some two centuries, and transformed the ruling classes, at least to some degree, the vision of Isaiah of the just and righteous ruler could not help but be inspirational.

For the kingdom of Jesus is to be a kingdom of justice and peace, where there are no more enemies, no more hatred or bloodshed or vengeance.

This is the expectation.

And so it is still. For the promise of Isaiah has been fulfilled in part, but not yet in full. Just as the weary world waited for a deliverer in Jesus’s day, we still wait–we still look forward with longing and hope to a renewed heaven and earth, where:

They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain,
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of theÂ LORD
as the waters shall cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:9)

Isaiah sums up this expectation with another reference to Jesse when he states:Â

On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.Â Â (Isaiah 11:10)

Advent bids us to look back to the coming of the Messiah–and forward to the day when Christ will come again in glory to bring a final fulfillment of all the prophecies and all the promises throughout all the ages.

This is the last Sunday of this church year. Next week we begin the season of Advent, the season of anticipation and of waiting for the birth of the Christ child, and with the inception of that time-before-the-dawn season that is Advent, we will leave Year C and begin Year A, and go from readings based largely on Lukeâ€™s gospel to ones reliant, for the most part, on Matthewâ€™s.

Consequently this Last Sunday After Pentecost is, in some way, the crowning Sunday of the church year. It is also known as Christ the King Sunday, which may sound appropriately royal and majestic. So it may seem odd today to return to Good Friday and Jesusâ€™ execution. Luke describes a helpless man pinned with cruel, bloody spikes to a cross being slowly executed by order of the state. The only reference to his royalty is a mocking sign that proclaims him â€œthe King of the Jewsâ€.

But what kind of king is this?

The bystanders certainly regard him with no deference or awe–in fact, they feel very free to mock him. Even one of the other men dying this death by torture alongside him derides Jesus. Heâ€™s suffering, heâ€™s dying, just like any other man. If he is Godâ€™s anointed, the Messiah, the Christ, where is the evidence of Godâ€™s favour? What kind of king is this?

Not an earthly king, certainly. The child whose birth we will begin to look for again next week did not come to a palace. He was not lapped in purple silks and fed pomegranates and ices carried by runners from distant mountains. He was born in a stable to very simple folk. He worked with his hands, and he never had a proper place to lay his head.

What kind of king is this?

His courtiers were mostly fishermen and assorted other rag-tag and bobtail folk, including an unaccountable number of women. He consorted with the lame, the halt, the blind, the mad, the diseased, the rejected and the despised. He never carried so much as one coin, and he told the rich to give away their money. He told the poor that God was on their side, and he told everyone who would listen to love their enemeies and to do good to those who hated them. He turned all the categories of power upside down, and he underlined his intention by saying, at every possible point, â€œThe last will be first and the first will be last.â€Â

What kind of king is this?

If you were standing there watching him die, you might have thought you were seeing, not a kingly triumph, but bitter failure and defeat.

His only army had been the crowd that had waved branches and hailed him at his coming. The mob had, perhaps, seen this as a bid for power. A failed bid at power, efficiently crushed by the grinding machine that is Rome.Â For Judea is a Roman colony, and crucifixion is a Roman death, one reserved for rebels or political criminals. That is one reason that there is that sign over the cross: â€œThe King of the Jews.â€ The Roman message is crystal clear. In Roman eyes, any would-be messiah is a rebel and any rebel is an enemy of the Rome, and will be dealt with summarily and bloodily. The sign is not meant to honour him, but to crush him in his last hours, and to ruthlessly extinguish any flickering hopes his followers might still have nurtured.

What kind of king is this?

That is what the sneering spectators are asking. If this is the Lordâ€™s Messiah, what is he doing, bleeding, suffering, dying, naked and alone?

But this is the very moment of Jesusâ€™ kingship.

From first to last, he has turned upside-down every other category of power. God became flesh–not just weak, but baby-weak. But God became flesh to enter fully into human life, so that we might enter into the divine life. Christ the King is not a king of earthly power who stands over and against ordinary, common human life, but a king of heavenly power who accompanies us in every moment of our lives, who knows what it is to be human in all its guises and faces.

What they do not see is that our king is right there, right in the very heart of all human suffering and all loss, plunged into the profound depths of all human loneliness and wretchedness in this desolate and desolating dying and death. For it is precisely this death that seals and confirms Christâ€™s kingship. His self-giving life pours forth onto all.

And one of the two men dying with him sees Jesus as he is. Not as a failed king, but as the only true king that ever was. In the midst of his own suffering and agony he understands: Only a crucified Messiah can enter even the deepest of human abysses and lead us to safety and salvation, for Godâ€™s power is utterly the opposite of human power. Godâ€™s power is the power of love and peace and justice and beauty and self-giving. The Kingdom of Heaven could never be seized by force. A kingdom of peace and wholeness can not be created by acts of murder and vengeance.

The dying man confesses his faith in the last words he may have ever spoken when he gasps out: â€œJesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.â€

And the only true King answers: â€œTruly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.â€

So what kind of king is this?

A king whose victory is the greatest reversal of all, for this time, death itself has been reversed. A king who has thrown open the doors of the Kingdom. A king who asks us to invite him into our hearts, that he may dwell here with us, just as he invites each and all of us to bide in his kingdom with him, for all time and eternity.

Today is the celebration of All Saints Sunday. Saint Paul referred to all his fellow-ChristiansÂ as â€œsaintsâ€–meaning by that one who had been made holy through baptism and membership in the body of Christ. And so it is appropriate that we often baptize, and make â€œlittle saintsâ€ on this day.

But there is another understanding of saints, which may be more familiar to us.Â In his book, Making Saints, author Kenneth Woodward writes, â€œA saint is always someone through whom we catch a glimpse of what God is like — and of what we are called to be.â€

Â I donâ€™t often preach on the Old Testament but in Job story I think we get both a glimpse of God and a glimpse of what we are called to be. So it fits very well with All Saints Sunday.

Job is a righteous man who has suffered one catastrophe after another. He has lost everything–land, wealth, health, and all his children. The basic understanding among the Jewish people had always been that God rewards and punishes in this life. But if God rewards the good and punishes the bad, how do you understand it when terrible things happen to good people and the unrighteous prosper?Â And was Job only righteous because he thought it would benefit him more to to be righteous than to be unrighteous? And if he were–is that true righteousness?

For that is how the whole story of Job begins, with this question: Who is God for Job if absolutely everything is stripped away?

When all is gone, Jobâ€™s despondent wife tells him to â€œCurse God and die!â€ But Job refuses. He insists he is innocent of wrongdoing and he wants God to show Godself and explain why these dreadful things have happened to a righteous man. Surely he has a right to an answer!

Job is waiting for God in a heap of dung, covered with boils, when his friends show up to comfort him–but their so-called comfort consists in telling him that he must have done something, perhaps something so terrible that he cannot even admit it to himself–and that even his questioning of God is a sin. Job is as adamant in insisting he has no secret sin and that it is not impious of him to ask God to explain Godâ€™s actions.Â Much of the book is an account of the debate rages between Job and his comforters.

And then, abruptly, God comes to JobÂ and speaks â€œout of the whirlwindâ€Â to ask in words of terrible beauty: â€œWhere were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding… who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy… Have you commanded the morning since your days began and caused the dawn to know its place… Have you entered the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deepâ€¦ Where is the way to the dwelling of light?… Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades, or loose the cords of Orion?… Do you give the horse its might?… Is it by your wisdom the hawk soars?… Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes its nest on high?…â€ (Job, 38-39)

As the litany goes on and on, Job is utterly abashed by this glimpse of Godâ€™s Glory. He comprehends both the unutterable majesty and the terrible holiness that is God, and his own littleness. None of Jobâ€™s questions are answeredâ€”the mystery of why bad things happen to good people is not explained in Jobâ€”but there is a promise made, which our reading affirms. And that promise is this: whether we can see it or not, this glorious, holy, awe-ful, mysterious God is always working for Godâ€™s good purposes. ThatÂ those good purposes encompass all that is, including every human being born. And that suffering and death will never have the last word.

Job is righteous, but he is not perfect. An earthly saint is not perfect. No human being is perfect–that is our intended end, that we will be completed and perfected in God. Even an earthly saint may question or doubt or rail at circumstances. But in the end, a saint is one who has learned to live in faith in Godâ€™s promises regardless of circumstancesâ€”just because it is God who has promised.

And the glimpse of Glory that is given, from time to time, is what sustains that saint in all the hardships and trials of this life.

Job himself wishes that he could hold on to this vision of gloryâ€”he knows that while now all is clear to him, there will be times to come when life will again seem very hard and desperate, and he wants to cling fast to this revelation:Â

O that my words were written down!
O that they were inscribed in a book!
O that with an iron pen and with lead
they were engraved on a rock forever!

But he cannot hold onâ€”iron, lead and rock are not heavy enough to hold God in place. God is so much larger than any box we can seek to thrust God intoâ€”we must stand on the promises, with Job:

For I know that my Redeemer lives,and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;
and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
then in my flesh I shall see Godâ€¦

These are the words with which we bury our deadâ€”our completed saintsâ€”who go before us into the promises. And these words console us, and remind us, in the times that are as heavy and dull as rock and iron and lead, that God has the last, the Living Wordâ€”and that an eternal promise has been made to the saints of God that will never, never be broken.

On Sunday, Nov. 6 we will have our annual All Saints Childrenâ€™s Procession.

The children come in, dressed in saintsâ€™ costumes, to the hymn, â€œI Sing a Song of the Saints of God.â€

The six saints featured in the hymn come in firstâ€”for those of you who donâ€™t know, this is who they are:

â€œOne was a doctorâ€ refers to Luke theÂ physician who wrote the Gospel by that name as well as The Book of Acts.

â€œOne was a queenâ€ is for Margaret of Scotland .

â€œOne was a shepherdess on the greenâ€ was Joan of Arc, who was a shepherdess before she became a soldier-saint.

â€œOne was a soldierâ€ refers to Martin of Tours (born a pagan, his name refers to Mars, the Roman god of war, and he was a Roman soldier before his conversion.)

â€œOne was a priestâ€ refers to John Donne. This is one saint you wonâ€™t find in a Roman Catholic calendar of saints, as he was an Anglican priest. He was also a very fine poet. Â It was he who wrote, â€œSend not to ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.â€

â€œAnd one was slain by a fierce wild beastâ€ refers to Ignatius of Antioch who died very serenely inÂ the Colliseum, despite being ripped apart by lions at the time. He wrote a series of letters as he was being taken to Rome, and in one he wrote â€œI am dying willingly for Godâ€™s sake, if only you do not prevent itâ€¦I am Godâ€™s wheat, and I am to be ground by the teeth of wild beasts so that I may become the pure bread of Christ.â€

We have costumes in all sizes. We even have animal costumes for Ignatiusâ€™s â€œfierce wild beastsâ€ and Joanâ€™s sheep.

Any child, ages 3 and up, is welcome to be part of the procession. However, please encourage your older child to participate, as the saints go up the aisleÂ separately, and it’s usually best if the child is at least 5 or 6.Â Children who are shy, or very young, or new to the procession, are welcome to come in all together at the last verse, the one that celebrates the â€œThousands and Thousandsâ€ of Â saints who are still among usâ€”people you can meet on a bus or a train or at sea, etc. We have lots of costumes for them as well.

Children who are taking part should come at 9:00 on Sunday morning, Nov. 6 to dress and to practice the procession. It is not complicated and we have adults on hand at both ends of the procession.

Please remember that Sunday, November 6 is the start of Eastern Standard Time. If you forget you will be an hour early!